Broadband News

Broadband for all in Cambridgeshire to cost up to £100m

Cambridgeshire and Peterborough are forging ahead with their plans for 2
Mbps for all by 2015 with superfast broadband available to some 90% of the
properties and businesses in the areas covered by the County Council and City
Council.

Computing.co.uk has spotted a Ted
(tenders electronic daily) in the supplement to the Official Journal of the
European Union. This tender document reveals that the local authority is
looking for either a company willing to invest some of its money, or a
consortium of suppliers. The size of this investment will not be insignificant
either, some £6.75m is coming from the BDUK, another £23m from Cambridgeshire
County Council and Peterborough City Council. The overall value of the contract
over its lifetime is estimated to be £70m to £100m, meaning that private sector
investment from the winner of the tender will be some £40m to £70m. Though some
funding from the EU may reduce the amount needed.

The councils in this case appear to be define superfast broadband as 30 Mbps and faster and the talk of a
consortium bodes well, as smaller wireless providers may be able to work with a
larger provider to provide better coverage in the most rural areas, for example
to provide a service that gets close to meeting the superfast definition even
in that hardest to reach last ten percent of properties.

Comments

Another one for BT to woo with its vital vision. Another pot to patch up the copper. If they have £100 million they could get some rural fibre networks built and provide some competition. That's the way to do it. As long as openreach owns most of the infrastructure and wholesale owns the feeds this monopoly is throttling the nation. Open access? its a joke.

cyberdoyle

over 5 years ago

CD

They don't have £100m, the have £30m, the rest comes from the private sector.
At B4RN costs (£1,600 per proerty) that's <20,000 homes.

themanstan

over 5 years ago

Yeah if B4RN as willing to put up 70m to do the job go for it :o)

GMAN99

over 5 years ago

Throttling the nation, please explain.

Somerset

over 5 years ago

cd - you are really going to have to explain how the UK is going to get fibre to every property. The same reply to every article that appears does not help the discussion.

Somerset

over 5 years ago

Well we'd all like fibre networks rural or otherwise. Trouble is, only fibre Government can afford comes in a box with Kelloggs on it. As nobody else is offering and nobody wants their tax or phone bill rising then it wont be happening any time soon.

According to BSG the price of HS2 would have covered a full FTTH rollout yeah

GMAN99

over 5 years ago

Isn't the newer guesstimate around a mere £15 billion...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8069768.stm

themanstan

over 5 years ago

Not sure why that guess is so different and who guessed it but the full BSG report is very detailed. 15bill seems cheap to cover all properties

GMAN99

over 5 years ago

In the pot for CCC is
£6.7M from BDUK
£6.7M matching funding from BT (who else will bid?)
£1M from EU
£30M from CCC (borrowed)
total £44.4
balance from ??? ££55.60
There are 130,000 dwellings in rural CCC, NGA says £1750 per dwelling, Total Project cost £227.5M